Bastard Out of Carolina - Dorothy Allison [75]
“Your mama’s an ayn-gel,” I whispered hoarsely, mocking the way Mrs. Pearl would say it, “just an ayn-gel of Gaaaaad.”
“Gaaaaad damn right,” Shannon whispered back, and I saw her hatred burning pink and hot in those eyes. It scared and fascinated me. Was it possible she could see the same thing in my eyes? Did I have that much hate in me? I looked back at Mrs. Pearl, humming around the pins in her mouth. A kind of chill went through me. Did I hate Mrs. Pearl? I looked at their porch, the baby’s breath hanging in baskets and the two rocking chairs with hand-sewn cushions. Shannon’s teeth flashed sunlight into my eyes.
“You look like the devil’s walking on your grave.”
I shivered and then spit like Granny. “The grave I’ll lie in an’t been dug yet.” It was something I’d heard Granny say. Shannon grabbed my arm and gave it a jerk.
“Don’t say that. It’s bad luck to mention your own grave. They say my grandmother McCray joked about her burying place on Easter morning and fell down dead at evening service.” She jerked my arm again, hard. “Think about something else quick.” I looked down at her hand on my arm, puffy white fingers gripping my thin brown wrist.
“That child will rot fast when she goes,” Aunt Raylene had said once. I felt sick.
“I got to go home.” I pulled air in fast as I could. “Mama wants me to help her hang out the laundry this afternoon. ”
“Your mama’s always making you work.”
And yours never does, I thought.
“I like your family,” Shannon sometimes said, though I knew that was a polite lie. “Your mama’s a fine woman,” Roseanne Pearl would agree, eying my too-tight raggedy dresses. She reminded me of the way James Waddell looked at us, of his daughters’ smug, superior faces, laughing at my mama’s loose teeth and Reese’s curls done up in paper scraps. Daddy Glen was still working for the Sunshine Dairy and continued to take us over to his father’s or one of his brothers’ every few weeks, though they never seemed any happier to see us. Their contempt had worn my skin thin, and I had no patience for it. Whenever the Pearls talked about my people, I’d take off and not go back for weeks.
Now I took a deep breath, trying to get my stomach under control. Sometimes I really couldn’t stand Shannon.
“We’re gonna go to the diner for supper tonight. They have peach cobbler this time of year.”
“My daddy’s gonna make fresh ice cream tonight.” Shannon smiled a smile full of the pride of family position. “We got black walnuts to put on it.”
I didn’t say anything. She would. She would rot very fast.
The gospel circuit ran from North Carolina to South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama. The singers moved back and forth on it, a tide of gilt and fringed jackets that paralleled and intersected the country western circuit. Sometimes you couldn’t tell the difference, and as times got harder certainly Mr. Pearl stopped making distinctions, booking any act that would get him a little cash up front. More and more, Mama sent me off with the Pearls in their old yellow DeSoto, the trunk stuffed with boxes of religious supplies and Mrs. Pearl’s sewing machine, the backseat crowded with Shannon and me and piles of sewing. We would pull into small towns in the afternoon so Mr. Pearl could do the setup and Mrs. Pearl could repair tears and frayed embroidery while Shannon and I went off to picnic alone on cold chicken and chow-chow. Mrs. Pearl always brought tea in a mason jar, but Shannon would rub her eyes and complain of a headache until her mama gave in and bought us RC Colas.
Most of the singers arrived late.
It was a wonder to me that the truth never seemed to register with Mr. and Mrs. Pearl. No matter who fell over the boxes backstage, they never caught on that the whole Tuckerton Family had to be pointed in the direction of the microphones, nor that Little Pammie Gleason—“Lord, just thirteen!”—had to wear her frilly blouse long-sleeved because she had bruises all up and down her arms from that redheaded boy her daddy wouldn’t let her marry. They never seemed to see all the “boys